7,100 apply in first 2 days of virtual job fair

By Jason Miller

Apr 26, 2002

Applicants flocked to the virtual IT job fair last week presented by the CIO Council and Office of Personnel Management.

The five-day pilot started April 22 and in the first two days received more than 7,100 applications. The usajobs.opm.gov Web site, which hosted the job fair, received more than 736,000 hits in 48 hours.

The response required the addition of four servers to handle the rush of applicants, said Pat Popovich, the State Department's deputy CIO for management and one of the job fair's organizers.

'We expected this many people to apply but not all at once,' she said. 'The first two days have tremendously surpassed our expectations.'

Popovich expected about 20,000 to 25,000 people to apply over the five-day trial.'The success is very exciting,' she said. 'This could be the model for future hiring. We hoped for this type of reaction from the public.'